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Monthly Archives: February 2014

Come celebrate the opening of a new public art installation by Brad Guarino. Opening reception for Passing Through, a public art project for Tunxis Community College is on Thursday, March 6, 4-7 p.m., 271 Scott Swamp Road, Farmington, Connecticut.

An exhibition of paintings and a video piece by the artist John O’Donnell, entitled STILLLIFE, is currently on display in Westover’s Schumacher Gallery. A public reception with the artist will be held in the gallery on Saturday, March 22nd from 4 to 6 pm.

Located in the School’s Louise B. Dillingham Performing Arts Center, the Schumacher Gallery is open Mondays through Fridays from noon until 5 pm and Saturdays from 1 to 5 pm whenever Westover is in session; it is closed on Sundays. Because the School will not be in session from February 27th through March 18th, the exhibition will be open to the public through February 26th and will then reopen from March 19th through March 28th. Visitors may access the gallery by coming to the main entrance of the School, which is located on the Middlebury Green.

STILLLIFE is a title that refers not only to the category of painting but also to a calm reflection on life and time. O’Donnell’s process and materials are inspired by the history of painting and contemporary abstraction. In the studio he paints directly onto found objects and then attempts to replicate them on a burlap canvas with gesso and acrylic paint; sometimes he uses oil paint and spray paint to reference different historical and contemporary processes.

The exhibition also includes a video piece created by O’Donnell, who was inspired by a musical composition written and produced by Seattle-based musician Jean Chalant.

John O’Donnell is Adjunct Professor of Visual Arts in Painting and Drawing.

Painting from the Virtual World is an exhibition of work from artist Cynthia Guild. The exhibition runs from February 20 to March 5, 2014. The opening Reception is Saturday February 22nd 5-8 pm.

The artist states, “The work touches on universal themes: alienation, individual will, and the passage of time. Many of the paintings are worked from web surveillance camera images bringing a peculiar distance to the work. It is my hope that the paintings capture the sense of beauty, endurance and resignation that mimics my own vision of life.”

The show features new work from the artist at the Colo Colo Gallery in New Bedford, Massachusetts at 101 W. Rodney French Blvd., Door #4. (508) 642-6026. Hours for the gallery are T/TH/Fr/Sat – 1-6, Sun. 12-5. More information on New Bedford is found at this link.

Cynthia Guild is an Adjunct Professor of Visual Arts in Painting and Drawing.

Each year, Green Lights, an initiative of the Last Green Valley (tlvg.org), encourages residents of our region to show support for the National Heritage Corridor by displaying green lights in any way they can imagine between February 15 and March 17, 2014.

This year, Eastern’s Design Program, Thread City Development, Inc., the Willimantic Screen Project, the Willimantic Brewing Company and the Kerri Art Studio & Gallery are partnering to illuminate the Kerri Gallery storefront on 861 Main Street, Willimantic, in celebration of the Last Green Valley’s 4th Annual Green Lights initiative. The Kerri Gallery will host an opening reception for Green Lights on Thursday 2/27, 6-8 pm. This reception is free and open to the public—All are welcome.

The Gallery will glow each night from February 27 to March 5, 2014 with a series of publicly visible, inventively imagined green light images created by Eastern Connecticut State University design students.

A portrait by Terry Lennox has been selected for exhibition in Faces of Winter 2014 ~ Building on Classics Biennial Juried Fine Art Portrait Exhibition and Symposium. This exhibition is presented by The Connecticut Society of Portrait Artists at the University of Connecticut Stamford Art Gallery in Stamford, Connecticut.

The exhibition runs from February 6–28, 2014. The opening reception is Thursday, February 6, 6 pm. Please visit the Stamford Art Gallery website to find out more information and directions.

Tondo Art: An Intimate Exhibition of Miniature Paintings is at The Niche Gallery at Middlesex Community College in Middletown, Connecticut. This exhibition runs from January 27–March 8, 2014. A reception is on Wednesday, February 19th, 5:00–7:00 pm.

Karen Bartone’s series of tondo paintings employ the traditional round panel format and the Italian Renaissance combination of oil paint and gold leaf. Picturesque subjects of reflected water lilies, trees, sky and rippled water dislocate viewer’s sense of specificity as they are composed within closely cropped peephole perspectives. The small scale and circular shapes here similarly reference telescopic and magnified slide compositions in as much as the direct landscapes they represent.

Muriel Miller has an exhibition of landscape paintings in Plein Air at the Connecticut Audubon Center in Pomfret, Connecticut. The exhibition is from January 5 – February 26, 2014.

A resident of Hampton, Connecticut Muriel’s paintings are plein air (directly on site), reflecting her emotional and artistic response to a scene stimulating her imagination. Rather than rendering photographic images of the scene she captures her feelings, light and colors that she see in that ever changing moment to capture a sense of place. While some of her images are from the area, many were done while teaching students in Art Location Studies Abroad in England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Australia.

Smart Painting is an exhibition organized and curated by John O’Donnell. This exhibition opens at ArtSpace in New Haven, Connecticut Friday, February 7th and runs until Saturday, March 22nd, 2014. The opening reception is Friday, February 7th from 5 to 8 pm.

A show of paintings by artists who respond to the institution of contemporary abstraction. These painting are sharp, quick, bright, amusing, elegant and are aware of their own limitations and forge on, in the familiar, but ambiguous territory of abstraction. Confidently defining space through the use of line and structure these paintings challenge traditional notions of abstraction through rational constructions that examine concepts of composition and depth.

John O’Donnell lives and works in Connecticut. He is a multidisciplinary artist and has created performance pieces and videos for museums, galleries, and artistic festivals nationally and internationally.

More information can be found at ArtSpace, 50 Orange Street, New Haven, CT. Artspace is open from noon to 6 p,.m. Wednesdays & Thursday from 12-6 pm, Fridays & Saturdays from 12-8 pm. The gallery is free and open to the public.

Professor John O’Donnell is an Adjunct Professor of Art teaching painting and drawing.